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Call for Artists: Where Ideas Are Born Exhibition 2023

Call for Artists: Where Ideas Are Born Exhibition 2023

Call for Artists

Where Ideas Are Born exhibition will be taking place at Aberdeen Art Gallery, 1 April – 11 June 2023. This exhibition brings together the work of over 20 photographers from the celebrated Magnum agency, including Inge Morath, Eve Arnold and Robert Capa. Around 70 photo portraits of internationally renowned artists capture the moment in their studios when the spark of creativity ignites and ideas are born. Artists such as Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keefe, Ai Weiwei and Yayoi Kusama are all seen in their creative environments: from the cramped studios of the Parisian avant-garde artists at the beginning of the 20th century, to the New York lofts of the American pop and minimal artists and the highly professional studios of the international stars of the contemporary art market.

Show us where your ideas are born!
The exhibitions team at Aberdeen Art Gallery is inviting artists living in AB postcodes to share images of their own creative spaces with visitors to the Magnum exhibition. This could be a picture of you in your creative space, or simply the empty creative space you work in. Digital images will be shared on a screen in the exhibition gallery.
For inspiration, visit the website for ‘Where Ideas are Born‘ . The project is free to enter. To participate, you must accept the following Conditions of Entry:

• Artists must practice within the AB postcode

• Photographs and accompanying information must be titled ‘Where Ideas Are Born – Entry’ and submitted to Aberdeen Artists Society by email; aberdeenartistssociety@gmail.com

• Only 1 photographic image per artist.

• Accompanying information must include:
– Your name, either your actual name, or as per your artistic presence
– The location of your studio e.g. Aberdeen, Stonehaven, etc and a specific location, eg Deemouth Artist Studios, The sheddie in the Gairdin etc
– The name of the photographer (optional)
– Images can be landscape, portrait or square format (Note, that they will displayed on a landscape digital screen)

• File format; JPEG (RBG) 300dpi

• Deadline for submission; 23:00 Sunday 19th February

• Aberdeen Artists Society and Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums (AAGM) reserve the right to select from the photographs submitted, as our response to the exhibition.

• All selection decisions are final and we will not engage in any correspondence or discussion on the outcomes of our selection processes.

• By submitting images to Aberdeen Artists Society, you grant full and permanent permission for the AAS and AAGM to store, communicate, process, print, publish or otherwise use these images for the purposes of promotion, publicity, film-making and documentation, both now and in thefuture.

• Aberdeen Artists Society Council and AAGM reserves the right to alter the arrangements relating to any aspect of the Exhibition and its organisation according to circumstances.

• Details of selected images will be shared prior to the opening of the exhibition on 1 April.

Please indicate on your email if you DO NOT wish us to retain your contact details for future mailings.

 

 

 

A Retrospective view of AAS 2022

A Retrospective view of AAS 2022

Aberdeen Artists Society’s 2022 Exhibition at Aberdeen Art Gallery

Aberdeen Artists Society is one of Scotland’s longest-established artist-led membership bodies, dating from 1827, and since Aberdeen Art Gallery opened in 1885, the Society has regularly exhibited here.

After a break during the redevelopment of the Art Gallery and then the lockdown during the first stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are delighted to present our 2022 Exhibition in this beautifully re-imagined exhibition space, filled with new artworks: paintings, prints, three-dimensional works, silverware, jewellery, videos and more. We continue to live through extraordinarily dark times, but human creativity burns ever more brightly, and AAS 2022 represents an enduring illumination from the combined light of 178 creative minds.

A great deal of careful preparation is necessary to succeed in making a major exhibition.
AAS Council  spent over a year planning the event, based on knowledge from past times and the techniques and traditions left to us by the people who organised exhibitions throughout the 1980s and 1990s and beyond. Not many of these major figures are still available, and so the process entailed a steep learning curve for our tiny band of volunteers.

Fortunately modern IT is a lot more flexible and generally accepted than it was 30 years ago, when during my first tour of duty as AAS President, with the help of Christine Leith I introduced the use of spreadsheets and once-only entry (on an early laptop computer) at hand-in, making possible information-flow direct to the catalogue and creating a letter to entrants without transcription. In those days it wasn’t always easy to convince creative people that computers might have a useful role in their lives, but the potential of IT systems to reduce both workload and transcription errors did in time become evident to a number of people, and for me personally in my parallel existence as a medical specialist and budding information systems originator in the NHS, this experience was very helpful. By then, though, along with my colleague Dr Pradeep Ramayya, I’d already designed a prototype bedside patient-record system and installed it in the intensive care unit at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary (ABICUS, 1984) which led to us publishing many research papers on computing in medicine and anaesthesia, and subsequently to my participation in a European Community funded international project studying artificial intelligence in Medicine.

In a further parallel existence, in 1985 I became involved in setting up Grampian Hospitals Art Trust, assisting Norman Matheson, Arthur Watson, Ian McKenzie Smith, Andrew Dewar, Syd Burnett, Sandy Fraser and other eminent artists. This was a transformative series of events in which professional artist members of AAS donated more than 100 artworks to kick-start the GHAT collection, and led to solid and enduring links between Aberdeen Artists Society, Grampian Hospitals Art Trust, Aberdeen Art Gallery, RGU / Gray’s School of Art, the NHS in Grampian, and Peacock Printmakers. Many individuals played major roles within and across these organisations, but the transformative catalyst who provided the central vision and drive was Arthur Watson. We were thrilled that Arthur was able to speak at the opening of our 2022 exhibition at Aberdeen Art Gallery.

I hope this brief background illustrates how a shared vision can create cooperative working between disparate groups to the advantage of everyone.

At the same time it might be worth observing how skills developed specifically in one area of life can readily be transferred from one situation to benefit another elsewhere; and actually this goes to the heart of how volunteer organisations work, where everyone in the team, whatever their background and life-experience, brings what they know and can do in service to the community, unified by a vision and a common set of values.

Long before selection, hand-in and hanging, the entire process has to be planned meticulously. In everyday life, usually subconsciously, we all use mental modelling all the time from moment to moment, but when it comes to more complex tasks which will play out over many months, effective software tools are readily available to help simplify and build these mental models in a form which can be shared, critiqued and redesigned.

There is an infinite number of ways of hanging an exhibition, and for the best impact how to layout the artworks is of vital importance to the curators and their team. Of course, the final result is what actually matters, and all theoretical considerations are cast to the winds once the layout commences. An arrangement will invariably start off with quite a lot of conscious thought, but over the course of many hours everything gradually changes, so that in the end it’s the combination of intuition and feeling which are the deciding factors. “Seeing with the heart”; and Mono no aware, as the Japanese say.

Dr. Donnie Ross

President, Aberdeen Artists Society 

AAS Summer Exhibition 2021

AAS Summer Exhibition 2021

Welcome to the AAS Summer Exhibition 2021

As I hope you will agree, our Online 2021 Exhibition which runs from Saturday 12 June until Sunday 29 August 2021, reaches a particularly high standard this year and the icing on the cake is that Aberdeen Artists Society has accordingly been able to award prizes to several brilliant works by extremely talented artists.

 
We send our warmest congratulations and best wishes to the prizewinners, and hope that these successes will encourage artists both young and old, professional and amateur, to develop their own special talents & potential, and to follow their own unique pathway towards the marvelous worlds of artistic practice. Aberdeen Artists Society

List of Prize Winners for Aberdeen Artists Society 2021 Exhibition

AAS Prizes for Excellence

(Four prizes of £250 each)

  • Hun Adamoglu: Wild Aloe Vera of Mare Monte’ – Oil on canvas
  • Lisa Gribbon: Drifting Blue – Watercolour
  • Kirsten McAllister: Vesuvius – Oil on canvas
  • Tamar Chatterjee: Agnes – Oil on canvas

The Dr. Donnie Ross Prizes for Innovation & Creativity in Watercolour:

(One prize of £500 and two prizes of £250 each)
  • Lisa Gribbon: Drifting Blue – £500
  • Rowena Comrie: Interruption – £250
  • Peter Davis: Fjora – £250

The MSD Design Ltd* and GRP Aberdeen Ltd* prizes for Drawing and Painting 2021 were gifted by Martin Stevenson, who is the owner of both Companies, with the aim of encouraging and championing traditional drawing and painting imbued with the British school aesthetic.

Martin states: It would be expected that prize winners would display mastery in the techniques underpinning drawing and painting: draughtsmanship and understanding of the emotional palette.

Award for Drawing and Painting 2021

Prize £500

  • Hun Adamoglu: Wild Aloe Vera of Mare Monte’ – Oil on canvas

http://www.msddesignltd.com







Award for Drawing and Painting 2021

Prize £500

  • Donald Ritchie: Borders Landscape Near Grantshouse – Oil on canvas

www.grpaberdeen.com

Selection Committee Shelagh Brown, Ann Craig, Andrew Dewar, Alan Florence, Melanie Guatelli, Susie Hunt, Rita Kermack, Claire Kidd, Gail McMillan, Trisha Richie, Dr Donnie Ross, Jenny Ross, Martin Stevenson, Gerry Stott, Bruce Swanson and Fenneke Wolters-Sinke

Hanging Committee Andrew Dewar, Susie Hunt and Dr Donnie Ross

Organising Exhibition Committee Andy Dewar, Susie Hunt, Claire Kidd, Trisha Richie and Gerry Stott

Special Thanks Andy Laffan – Int-Tech Martina Camatta – Film Maker

Video Production Group Chaired by Rita Kermack, Martina Camatta, Dr Donnie Ross, Susie Hunt, Andy Dewar, Gail McMillan, Trisha Richie and Mel Guatelli

Judges Panel Andy Dewar, Martin Stevenson, Gerry Stott, Bruce Swanson and Susie Hunt